The primary objective of Production Operations is to operate every well in the field at peak economic efficiency levels at all times. That is to say, the goal is to sustain maximum fluid production with minimum cost inputs across the field, keeping lease operating expenses (LOE) down while keeping profits up. The highest value lever by which this is achieved is through artificial lift optimization.

With thousands of wells and minimal staff whom often have limited experience, there are simply too many wells and too little time to realistically come close to achieving this goal. Legacy technologies have helped to keep fields optimized to some extent, but these tools are heavily manual, costly and, most importantly, fundamentally unable to deliver the autonomous oil well that we are now capable of running in the modern age.

Our product vision focuses on delivering the autonomous oil well through IOT-enabled edge devices deploying leading-edge data science and machine learning augmented with trusted physics-based principles. We can do this on any rod pump well, anywhere in the world with our unique technology.

One such example currently being deployed to enable well autonomy with major operators is Autonomous Set Point Management (ASPM). Optimization follows processes that are straightforward and well-defined. Ambyint recognized the pain-points in the workflow, the gaps in technology, and the value that could be delivered if workflows could be automated. We asked ourselves: why can’t a machine optimize a well?

With ASPM, operators are seeing production increases on underpumping wells of up to 33% without reducing production efficiency. On overpumping wells, these same operators are realizing efficiency gains of 10-25% without losing production, while simultaneously reducing workover and electricity costs by those percentages or greater.

To date, we have found that only 15% of wells are dialed in. Supported by workflows built for technology, applying these results field-wide can result in LOE reductions of $1.00-1.58/BOE off a baseline of $10/BOE. As we progress towards the fully autonomous well, we believe we can achieve LOE reductions of $2.50 – $3.50/BOE.